Simon Stephens Plays 5

'Stephens writes dramas set in uncaring, uncompromising worlds, whose characters speak in a language at once naturalistic and yet artificially pared-down and whose uncertain attempts to assert their own identities sometimes lead to gratuitous and brutal acts of violence.' - Financial TimesA fifth collection of plays by one of Britain's most prolific contemporary playwrights, Simon Stephens, charting his work from 2011-2016, ranging from London's Royal Court Theatre, Manchester's Royal Exchange and Broadway. Wastwater (2011) 'Metaphoric, allusive, and thoroughly disturbing in its evocation of suspicion and uncertainty, Wastwater is a thought-provoking play whose quiet intensity stays with you for days - its effect is like that of a ugly stone dropped into a pool, which results in constant ripples of dirty water lapping at your subconscious' (Aleks Sierz)Birdland (2014) 'Mega-fame and limitless cash can turn a man into a monster, and Simon Stephens's new play excellently evokes its hero's spiritually shrunken world' (Michael Billington, Guardian) Blindsided (2014) the dialogue has a rare quality of moment-by-moment intensity' (Telegraph)Song From Far Away (2015) 'a meditative monologue a searching study of impotently self-aware emotional insufficiency' (Independent) Heisenberg (2016) 'Mr. Stephens ... is an uncannily subtle dramatist who never wears his depths on the surface ... he probes clich s until they fall apart, before reassembling them into solid but transformed shapes, reminding us why such clich s have become enduring elements of our collective mythology.' (Ben Brantley, New York Times)